William Rose Benet Biography
William Rose Benét (February 2, 1886 – May 4, 1950) was an American poet, writer, and editor. He was the older brother of Stephen Vincent Benét.
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Col. James Walker Benét and his wife née Frances Neill Rose, and grandson of Brigadier General Stephen Vincent Benét. He was educated The Albany Academy in Albany, NY and at Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, graduating with a PhB in 1907. He began the Saturday Review of Literature in 1924 and continued to edit and write for it until his death.
Benét married four times: First, on 3 September 1912, he married Teresa France Thomson, with whom he had three children (James Walker Benét, Frances Rosemary Benét, and Kathleen Anne Benét). Teresa died in 1919. Benét's second wife whom he married on 5 October 1923, was poet Elinor Wylie. She died in 1928. Benét's third wife, whom he married on 15 March 1932, was Lora Baxter. They divorced in 1937. Benét's fourth wife, and widow, was children's writer Marjorie Flack.
In 1942, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book of autobiographical verse, The Dust Which Is God (1941).
He is also the author of The Reader's Encyclopedia, the standard American guide to world literature.
His son, James Walker Benét (b. 1914) is the author of two suspense novels and a guidebook to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Blake saw a treeful of angels at Peckham Rye,
And his hands could lay hold on the tiger's terrible heart.
Blake knew how deep is Hell, and Heaven how high,
And could build the universe from one tiny part.
...
Its cloven hoofprint on the sand
Will lead you—where?
Into a phantasmagoric land—
Beware!
...
High on the telephone wires, the paltry pitiful thing
Hangs in rags and tatters and loops of string.
A slight breeze shakes it, but cannot shake it down.
It flutters and flutters forgotten above the town.
...
There he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon's lip.
His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white side,
For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship.
I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide.
...
The snug little room with its brazier fire aglow,
And Piet and Sachs and Vroom — all in the long ago, —
Oh, the very long ago! — o'er their pipes and hollands seen;
And on the wall the man-o'-war, and firelight on the screen!
...
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